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Topic: Emmentaler lets try this again (Read 24264 times)

OK something I am not sure of, Temps,1. heating the milk at the start and as you suggest adding my cultures before it is heated to?2. The correct temp 90 deg.F?3. then rennet at this temp?4. stirring at said temp for 30 min after clean break and double curd cut before scalding?5. scalding temp 121 deg. F?(with a constant stir and a 40 minute temp rise?)I know where my thoughts are, what is your recommendation I am really lovin all the input i am getting

Temperatures depend on your recipe. Look at the recipe you are using, and do what it says. For our Alpkäse, temperature targets are different.

That said, your temperatures are around what I would say is good.

What culture are you using? I assume you are using a powdered starter?

When we use our whey culture, it has been incubated overnight and when we put it into the milk it is warm and fully actve. This makes a difference.

For a powdered culture, you have to adjust. I can't tell you exactly what adjustment.

If you take your culture out of the refrigerator, you should be fine to add it to refrigerated milk. Then it will gradually get warmed up with the milk. If you do this, warm it up slow.

I would actually recommend you do something replicating the practice on the alp. Heat up half of your milk to maybe 100 degrees (precision here is not important). The culture is mixed with this first part. Then add the other half, and heat up to 90 degrees (or 91, or whatever number you want.) If you are not preserving a whey culture, you can fudge things a little bit. When passing on a culture, you have to do things exactly the same every time, or you risk changing the balance of your culture or causing it to do strange things. But since you are probably using an isolated single use culture, this is not a factor.

If you do the 2-part warmup, it helps the culture to wake up and get to work.

Add the rennet at the proper temperature.

Now here is where I disagree with the 'common wisdom'. Many people will say all of this jargon about floc times and what have you. What I learned is that rennet should be measured out in such an amount that the curd is set in as close to 30 minutes as you can manage. I suppose this is because a lot of cheesemakers do pre-coagulation ripening and shoot for specific coag. pH targets, but we don't (and we can get consistent results). We just have a different method of accomplishing the same goal.

Now I have wondered off topic. Let's get back to your questions.

1. Yes, I would say so.2. Yes, sounds good. Only if your air is particularly cool then maybe add 2 degrees. 3. Yes. 4. Complicated. Stir for 30 minutes after the FIRST cut, then finish cutting. 5. Yes, correct. Only I will add one thing, during the first 10 minutes the temperature rise must be very slow. Even the thermo Swiss type cultures don't like it if they get hot too fast.

Now like I said up there somewhere, if you are using a powdered culture (or rather, if you are not passing on a whey culture) then you have a good deal of room for error. yes, error will yield slight differences in the finished cheese but there is an acceptable range that you should shoot to be in. The temps you have listed land you right in the middle of that range.

Since I preserve whey cultures, I have to be precise with all of my methods. The bacteria adapt to the process, and when you are all over the place then your bacteria can go off in unpredictable directions. Consistency for me means that the strains I want thrive and dominate. For you, constancy just means that you are doing a good job You have a culture that is isolated and one-time use. I don't.

I am thinking I might put up a small-batch adaptation of the Alpkäse recipe. If I do, you can use that as a reference as the process is very close. Just keep in mind that temperature targets are different.

I am just awed by all of the information contributed to this thread My thought is Saturday, the attempt to place this altogether and see if an improvised 5 gal. batch will work out many thanks and another cheese to Alpkäserei for all of his tutoring and most welcome knowledgewill be keeping this updated just need to absorb and comprehend

didnt look back at the video, but I'm assuming that's the curd breaker. It's just a flat piece of wood or metal used to disrupt the otherwise circular flow of the curd. This isn't necessary if you are stirring by hand, but if you use a machine that spins fins in a circle to stir the curd then you need one of these or else you won't actually be stirring anything, you'll just be spinning the whole mass around in a circle.

I would say you want something that is either solid or if it has holes they should be small. You don't want anything that the curd will try and get through. This that you show might try and break the curd and make it smaller. But it would be a good tool for training it out when finished.

I was thinking about this, and for the stirring stages something with a shape similar to a paint stirrer would work well for a small cheese

AlpkäsereiI do have more pix', I will put them up when I re-wright my note's I am contemplating my brine for tomorrow, thinking 1/4 cup salt in 4 cups of the saved whey at about 55 degrees.any thoughts on this?BTW the knit seem's to be excellent I Just put in in the press (without whey) for the 2 hour pressing period, I was thinking for the 4 hour press I want to raise the weight to say 60 Lbs. and for the overnight press at 80 or 90 Lbs. is this advisable?

Just saltwater is good for brining. An authentic Emmentaler would be soaked in plain old saltwater.

Put the cheese into the brine, and sprinkle a handful of salt over the top side and smear it around evenly. If you do this, it's not actually necessary to flip it halfway through, though you may want to anyway.

What is the weight of your cheese? I would need to know this before I could advise on pressing weights. We use a constant weight for pressing -a big beam that puts about 300 pounds of pressure on our 30+ pound cheeses. As I have said elsewhere, we follow the rule of 8 pounds of pressure for every pound of cheese being pressed (ok, so I learned it 8 kilograms pressure for every kilogram of cheese)

Really, I don't know how much effect over pressing would have. On a soft cheese it might do quite a bit but on an Emmentaler I don't relly think you are going to put too much weight on it. There is an old cheesemaker's operation 1 1/2 hours from me, the beam press that was used puts 1500 pounds of pressure on the cheese, which was similar in size to what we make.

13 minutes to 4 hour press so I think I will up the pressure some.What do you think the salt content in a 1/2 gallon of water should be for a brine?we have chloride in our water so maybe get some distilled water and add some cal cl to it?Just a thought